Since his introduction back in ’73, the man born Carl Lucas has gone by various names. First he was Hero For Hire, but when that unwieldy appellation failed, he became Power Man (and coincidentally torked off the previous holder of that particular appellation.) He even went by The Black Marvel briefly, during some time-travel shenanigans, but the name that has stuck is the one that he chose for himself after escaping Blackgate Prison, his “real name”: Luke Cage. Designed to remind him of his former incarceration, it has become as noteworthy as Spider-Man or The Invisible Woman, with the added plus of sounding like you’re about to get your face caved in by a steel-hard fist. Luke wasn’t the first superhero to be identified by a normal name (you should dig up the adventures of Kitty Kelly sometime), but you can’t help but think that Matt Murdock or Jo Nah could get away with dropping their noms de guerre, leading us to today’s nominal query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) thinks that Adam and Stephen Strange might be distantly related, on Stephen’s mother’s side of the family, asking: What superhero character(s) should give up their alias(es) and go by their real name instead?
3 Comments
Since he’s not allowed to be “Robin” anymore,, I’d say that Tim Drake should just go by his last name. (Except for maybe confusion with a real-world musician.)
Honorable Mention: at this point, I think Hank Pym has so many nom-du-guerres that he’s de facto just “Hank Pym.”
If they still do hero stuff, none.
I’ll vote for J’onn J’onzz.